There’s little doubt that the 1960s was a decade that changed the nation. What started out as an age of hopeful innocence grew into a time of rage and violence.

“At the start of the 1960s, people felt great confidence and expectations. The country was riding a wave of prosperity of the like that had never been seen before,” said Michael Flamm, professor of history, Ohio Wesleyan University, and author of “In the Heat of the Summer: The New York Riots of 1964 and the War on Crime.”

“A hallmark (of the ‘60s) was that the prosperity was shared” across society “like never before,” said Michael Kazin, professor of history, Georgetown University, and editor of Dissent magazine.

America may have been the richest country ever, but by the mid-’60s our sense of security was breaking down, first in urban areas but then spreading to the suburbs and rural areas, Flamm said.

Then as now, our impression of America was created by what we saw in popular culture, highlighted by the idyllic representations depicted on 1950s television shows like “Leave It To Beaver,” said Joel Rhodes, professor in the history department of Southeast Missouri State University. The happy families on TV did not accurately show the division that was already segmenting America in the ‘50s, said Rhodes, who believes “the Vietnam era” is a more appropriate term when discussing Americans’ growing loss of security during the decade.

While “the ‘60s are often remembered as a time of radicalism, it’s important to remember that on Jan. 1, 1960, the world didn’t wake up radical. The early 1960s looked more like what we collectively associate with the ‘50s than that ‘60s countercultural image,” said Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, a historian of contemporary American politics and culture and host of the Past, Present Podcast.

No. 1 threat

The end of World War II saw a brief period of euphoria, but we soon became a fearful nation, Rhodes said. People contemplated, “what if Pearl Harbor had been a nuclear attack?”

“Ever since the end of World War II, American never gets out of the shadow of war. We’re either preparing for war or fighting a war,” Rhodes said.

The government tried to build confidence through civil-defense measures, but the idea that a nuclear attack would be survivable by building a bunker or hiding under a school desk terrified people, Rhodes said.

“If you think of fear as layers of an onion peel, the No. 1 fear is nuclear war,” Rhodes said. The 13-day Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 brought home the fact that our nation was vulnerable to nuclear disaster, he added.

Assassinations

In the White House, the Kennedys were America’s glamorous first couple, not only representing hope for the future but fighting for it, too.

“The assassination of JFK led to uncertainty. What’s going to happen to our country?” Rhodes said.

The assassination was the first major national event played out on television, and as the images flashed over and over again, people thought, “If the president was vulnerable to attack, aren’t we all?”

Two more high-profile assassinations followed. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed by a sniper’s bullet April 4, 1968, and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, brother of President Kennedy, was fatally shot June 5, 1968, after winning the California presidential primary.

“Losing JFK, and then later RFK and MLK, were individually tragic events, but I think that with each of them, it is important to see that the violence of these tragic acts chipped away at what might have felt like a shared sense of purpose or faith in ‘working within the system’ to redress inequality,” Mehlman Petrzela said. “If each of these figures, most notably the president, could be so brazenly and violently silenced, what was the point of playing by the rules? It definitely shook people’s sense of faith in those rules as worth following (or) a guarantee of their own safety and civic and bodily well-being.”

The events of this era, “for different reasons, made those on both the right and the left question their safety,” Mehlman Petrzela said. “Liberals saw their reformist heroes assassinated — even someone like MLK whose platform had been explicitly nonviolence — and a violent war unfolding in Vietnam, whereas conservatives were repelled by a culture that seemed to have transformed innocent students into ‘campus radicals,’ giving rise to a call for ‘law and order.’”

Protest, rage and social change

The non-violent protests of the Civil Rights movement in the South set the stage for the student movement of the 1960s, Rhodes said. For middle-class Americans it seemed as if revolution was at hand. Young people fought for their free speech, protested Vietnam, and took over and even burned campus buildings.

“The common working-class American just didn’t understand. Why are these kids who have the privilege to go to college and come from good homes disrespecting authority? Why are they burning their draft cards? It was inexplicable” to many people, Rhodes said. “What’s happening to the values and traditions we hold dear? It made parents concerned what would happen to their younger children, too.”

The baby boomers represented a huge demographic.

“Over half of the U.S. population was under 30 by the mid ‘60s. Even if a small number of them were rebelling, it seemed that society as a whole was rebelling,” Flamm said.

It wasn’t just on college campuses. Everywhere men started wearing their hair long and younger people began to dress differently. The drug culture and the women’s movement were going mainstream, too, Flamm said.

While people have always found comfort and security in marriage, during the ‘60s divorce skyrocketed, Rhodes said. Single families and blended families increased. Women demanded equality, and mothers joined the workforce in greater numbers.

“Yes, groups like the Black Panthers were scary to some people, but heck, women, women in the suburbs were getting jobs and not staying at home and that was scary,” Rhodes said.

“Every time there is change — and there’s radical change in the ‘60s — there’s fearful reaction,” he said.

A flood of violence

The 1950s are often seen as a golden age with stable families, a plentiful economy and low crime rates. The mid-1960s ushered in a wave of violence, crime and urban riots.

America didn’t only feel more dangerous, it was more dangerous. The violent crime rate increased by 126 percent between 1960 and 1970, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. An American’s chances of being murdered was relatively low in the ‘50s and early ‘60s but doubled between 1964 and 1974.

“Beginning in 1964-1965, every summer the nation’s ghettos erupt in violence. There are over 300 riots in the late ‘60s,” Rhodes said.

“Every major city experiences a riot or rebellion,” Flamm agreed.

“This mixes seamlessly with the campus riots, the rise of radical militant groups like the Black Panthers. There’s a sense that the nation is at war with itself,” Rhodes said.

Economic insecurity

Insecurity really hits home when it hits your wallet. By the 1960s Americans had embraced economic security and the ability to buy a home and go on a yearly vacation.

“The ‘60s were a prosperous time in general, but we start to see a decline first in the macro towns and then in other areas like the Rust Belt,” Kazin said. “There was a fear of economic decline. Manufacturing was doing well, but the heyday was over.”

Industrially, countries like Japan and Germany were on the rise.

“The thing about insecurity is that when you start to feel insecure in one part of your life it tends to spread to other parts,” Kazin said.